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  Wilson nodded. “A figure of speech. He referred to his sense of rebirth, as a result of your firm’s services.”

  “Well, did he call again?”

  “Yes. He gave me instructions this time. They were quite simple. He said that in a few days—he didn’t know when, exactly—someone would give me a piece of paper with an address written on it, and that I would be expected there a little after twelve noon of that day.”

  “Is that all he said?”

  “No. He said I was to use the name Wilson, and—that once I had begun the process, there would be no turning back. In the sense, I suppose, that the opportunity would not be offered a second time.”

  Joliffe said nothing.

  “And he explained that it would mean just . . .” Wilson shrugged “ . . . just walking away from everything. But he assured me that no one would be hurt by what I did, and that my affairs would be handled on a strict and fair basis, which I did find reassuring, in view of Charley’s professional experience in trust management. I mean, a man of his standing could hardly be mistaken on such a point . . . Well, the whole idea now appeared to me to have a powerful logic. I didn’t need to be persuaded, and Charley was very matter-of-fact this time, as if it were only a question of clearing up details in a transaction already agreed on. It was like—well, like talking with a travel agent about the exact itinerary of a vacation trip, and yet . . . Let me put it this way. Part of me was convinced that I would do precisely what Charley suggested, and that it was as germane to my future as, say, the promotion to senior vice president which I am due to obtain in a year or two; and at the same time, another part of me was incredulous, in a quiet way, that I should entertain any such notions for a moment. But still, the part that wanted to follow Charley seemed to be a little more in control.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I’d been living as a matter of habit for so long that the routine had lost its force. Does that make any sense? The grooves had worn down, so to speak, and the slightest nudge was enough to send me off in a different direction, with all of the old instincts of habit still spinning away, like the wheels of a trolley that’s jumped its tracks. Oh, I don’t mean that just any sort of push would have been enough. For example, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have suddenly run off to Philadelphia to spend a weekend with some blonde. No, my habits were able to foresee that kind of thing, I think, and I would have been proof against a specific temptation. But Charley’s call—this was impossible to predict. There was no set of defenses against that.”

  “To put it another way, you were ready for such a call.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Ready. That’s the word. I was ready. Suppose I’d dreamed those calls. It wouldn’t have made any difference. But they weren’t dreams, of course. This morning, as I was walking the last block to the bank, right in the middle of the crowd, someone—a youngish man, I think—he came up beside me and he said, ‘Mr. Wilson?’ and he handed me the scrap of paper. Then he turned off to one side and I lost him. So I knew it was all real.”

  “Were you excited?”

  “No, not in the least. I felt mildly anxious, and disturbed, not being sure just what I would ultimately do. My mind was divided, you see. I was being drawn in some peculiar way, but my habitual self acted as a kind of brake . . . perhaps pretending that it would permit the process to begin, simply as a means of humoring a wild impulse. And that’s about the way I feel right now—divided. . . . Strange, I’ve never spoken to anyone this way before. Is that the effect of the drug you gave me?”

  Joliffe switched on the desk lamp, for the room had darkened considerably. He glanced at his watch.

  “You must be hungry, Mr. Wilson.” He touched a button on the communications box. “We’ll have a tray up here in a few minutes.” He stood up and put his spectacles carefully into their case. “My own part is over, Mr. Wilson, but if you’ll just make yourself at home here, some staff people will be in shortly to do the detailed processing.”

  “I haven’t agreed to be a client.”

  Joliffe smiled. “But you’re curious to see the rest of it, I should imagine. You’ve gone this far. Why not find out more, eh?” He drew a cigar from his pocket, clipped it with a tiny pair of scissors, and lighted it. “Just remember, Mr. Wilson,” he continued, blowing out a perfect circle of smoke, “you’re in the middle of a remarkable experience. You may have some doubts about it—most of our clients do, to be frank—but I would suspect that already it’s had a definite cathartic value to you. Don’t you feel better?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Fine. That’s really the essence of our function, you know. To make our clients feel better.” Joliffe seemed so satisfied with the situation that Wilson felt it would be a discourtesy to protest any further at that point, although his sensations of anxiety were still mounting.

  “So, just relax, sir,” Joliffe went on, as he took his hat from the coat-tree. “The food will be up shortly, and then, by the time you finish, the staff people will be in to see you.” He paused at the door. “Good luck, Mr. Wilson.”

  “Thank you.”

  After Joliffe left, Wilson remained seated on the couch, thinking of nothing in particular, and gazing passively at the window. It was fully dark now. The lights in the buildings outside formed a pattern which was in a constant process of change, for as some were switched off with the departure of the last office workers, others were turned on, presumably by janitors and scrubwomen, and all the tiny winking lights together seemed to be spread across the face of a single giant structure. Wilson found the sight quite interesting. He watched it for some time. Whenever a light appeared, he felt oddly cheered, thinking of the minute pulse of energy that it had drawn from the central electrical system, and each time one vanished, it vaguely depressed him, for he had come to imagine the lights almost as little living things, and himself as someone who for the moment had been empowered to observe their world, to rejoice in their radiance, and to sorrow when they were so abruptly extinguished. Thus he studied the night scene of the city as he might have watched, by the hour, a colony of ants under glass, or a beehive, or an aquarium containing miniature sea creatures, and while it occurred to him that he should instead be actively pondering his present situation, he felt no particular urgency to do so. His anxiety, steadily increasing, seemed to be centered not on himself but on the lights. Surely, he thought, they would not all be turned off. Surely some would survive through the night.

  Someone entered the room: a servant with a tray.

  “Your supper, sir.”

  “Ah . . . thank you, very much.”

  The servant set the tray on the desk, bowed slightly, and without another word withdrew.

  Wilson got up at once. He was definitely agitated now. The lights no longer held his attention. Just as the sight of some commuter dashing desperately through a crowded station toward his train will awaken, in the minds of the unhurried men he jostles, momentary fears that they, too, may be late, so the brief appearance of the businesslike little servant evoked in Wilson an imitative reaction that brought all of his apprehensions bristling up. He, too, must set about his affairs. No more mooning. He gave the tray, with its covered dishes, a glance, but reached instead for the telephone. First he would call his wife, then Mr. Franks, and then—

  But the line was dead. He jiggled the receiver angrily.

  It was useless.

  He stared around the room, but of course there was no other phone. His vexation brought with it the sensation that he was completely restored to his normal state of mind. The drug—surely that tea had been drugged—had worn off now, he decided, and he looked with great suspicion on the tray that the servant had placed down so innocently. He would certainly not make the same mistake twice!

  Well, if the telephone would not work, he would set out to find one that would—and perhaps he would just walk out of the building and have done with it all. Briskly he snatched up his hat and strode to the door, conscious that he had,
through some unaccountable lapse, slipped into a false and perhaps dangerous position, from which he must at once extricate himself.

  He opened the door and set off along a hallway. On each side were doors leading to what were presumably subordinate offices, and far ahead, at the end, was the usual bank of elevators. Reasoning that if the central switchboard were closed, none of the telephones in the other offices would be usable, Wilson went all the way to the elevators and pressed the call button of each, on the assumption that at night only one of them would be in operation.

  As he waited before the blank elevator doors, somewhat nervously smoothing his clothing and adjusting his Homburg, and hoping that the smudges on his face would not attract attention when he reached the street, he became aware of faint sounds of activity emanating from the offices along the corridor. He heard the intermittent mumble of voices, and a variety of indistinguishable noises that could be caused by the shuffling of papers, the scraping of chairs on the floors, the gliding of file drawers, and so forth. In itself, this evidence of business operation did not disturb him, although he realized that it was late for an entire staff to be at work, but he had become so impressed with the unorthodox character of Joliffe’s company (actually, he assumed that Joliffe was not the head of the firm, but rather some officer in it, perhaps comparable to an account executive), that he was not at all certain what might happen next. Suppose they found him absent from Joliffe’s office and rushed out to prevent him from leaving? That notion was not so foolish as it might seem, for men who would drug a client’s tea might be capable of anything. At this point, he recalled what had seemed to take place after he had drunk the tea, and he flushed with irritation and embarrassment.

  To dismiss the picture of his encounter with the woman, he glanced up sternly at the elevator floor indicators. Each, however, still rested at ground level. He pressed the buttons again, vigorously. One of the elevators would surely be available, he knew, for otherwise the late-working staff members would be unable to descend. Nevertheless, even after he had pushed the buttons a third time, there was no sign of movement on the indicators, and he determined that he would use the stairs, if necessary, although he supposed that he might be a good forty flights above the street. He walked over to the door marked “Exit” and tried it. It was either locked or so tightly jammed that he could not open it.

  Without pausing for reflection, he went straight to the nearest office door, pushed it open, and marched inside. At once he was nonplussed, for where he had expected to find an office of moderate size, with perhaps a desk or two and a filing cabinet, he was confronted with an enormous room that ran almost the entire width of the building and was full of men busy at a variety of occupations. Some were at desks, reading newspapers or working at jigsaw puzzles; others were engaged in little hobbies, such as gluing together ship models, while still others sat at their ease in comfortable chairs, reading books or taking part in games of chess or cards.

  It was a perplexing scene, too complicated for Wilson to comprehend fully at once. He moved forward, thinking that although these men seemed to fall into the category of clerks—for they wore the little tan cloth jackets traditionally assigned to clerks in certain old-fashioned firms—they were clearly not engaged in clerical work, but rather seemed to be merely passing the time unproductively, with their games and puzzles. Then, too, he saw that they were well-padded with flesh, instead of conforming to the usual dried-up and bony pattern of middle-aged clerks.

  He chose the nearest man, who was studying a stamp album. As he approached, the man looked up reluctantly, and Wilson realized then that his entry had produced not the slightest ripple of interest among the occupants of the huge room.

  “Excuse me,” said Wilson firmly, “but I’m trying to find my way out of the building. The elevators don’t seem to be running.”

  The man hesitated, as if debating how to respond; his manner was polite, and he attempted to gloss over his delay by rising slowly from the desk, clearing his throat, adjusting his cuffs, and briefly examining his fingernails.

  “Not running?” he said, pursing his lips and frowning slightly. “That’s odd. Um, perhaps the night operator was away for the moment. Do you think you might try again?”

  “I was standing there for at least ten minutes,” Wilson said. “Isn’t there some way he can be notified?”

  “I can try, if you like.” The man went without haste to a table nearby which supported an interoffice communications box, and painstakingly studied its markings. “This may be the one,” he said at length, and pressing one of the buttons, he spoke into the machine almost at once, without waiting for an inquiry: “I have a gentleman here who wishes to leave the building.”

  A metallic voice responded: “Yes. That would be Mr. Wilson. Would you ask him to return to Mr. Joliffe’s office, please? Mr. Ruby is waiting there.”

  “All right.”

  The man returned to Wilson, and regarded him with a kind of ironic reserve. It was puzzling. Wilson thought of the dust smudges on his face. Perhaps the man had resolved not to risk the possible breach of etiquette that would be involved if he mentioned the smudges, even while foreseeing that they would prove embarrassing to Wilson. But the man seemed to be looking at him with more compassion than the matter of smudges would call for.

  “Did you hear that, Mr. Wilson?” he asked mildly. “They want you down at the end of the hall again.”

  “Yes—well, all right. Thank you.”

  Wilson turned around. He was baffled once more. He did not feel able to make an outright protest, and at the same time he was more than a little worried about the fact that events seemed to conspire to keep him prisoner. As he reached the door, he cautiously turned for one last look about the room. For an instant, he had the impression that every pair of eyes was fixed on him, and that something extremely peculiar was on the verge of taking place—that, for example, all those tan-jacketed middle-aged clerks would burst into shouts of derision—but then he saw approximately what he had seen at first, a scene of quiet, domestic activity. He thought, also, that he detected a familiar face or two: the bald man who had been his guide earlier in the day, and the servant who had lately delivered his supper tray, but he could not be sure, and just as he turned around again to pass out into the hall, he wondered if he had not seen a face still more familiar than these, a face that had swiftly been lowered. Whose face? And had the face been familiar—or merely the eyes? He did not know, but that single glimpse of something that bordered tantalizingly on recognition was extremely distressing, and as he stood once more in the empty hall, he found that he was trembling. Courage, he told himself; be firm, be dignified, insist on your rights. He tried to recall some incident in his past where he had acted boldly in the face of some similar foreboding, but none came to mind, and his impotence was at that moment underscored by the opening of the door to Joliffe’s office at the end of the corridor, revealing a man’s figure. A hearty voice came bowling down at him:

  “Ah, there, Mr. Wilson!”

  Silently, Wilson trudged back toward the office, his hat in his hand.

  Mr. Ruby, who greeted him, was a portly little man with large dark eyes and the habit of puffing out his cheeks before each remark, as though his thoughts swelled up inside and then, beyond containing, exploded into speech.

  Introducing himself as an assistant general counsel of the firm, he politely motioned Wilson to a chair, seated himself at the desk, busily fingered the contents of his briefcase for a moment as his cheeks gradually distended, and then briskly inquired:

  “Well, what shall it be, sir—death or disappearance?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Of course, let me explain. It’s partly a matter of cost, partly a matter of personal taste. Some clients are naturally sensitive on the question of death, and prefer the alternative, although my own opinion is strongly of the opposite. That is, assuming that cost is not a decisive factor, death has many advantages. For example, insurance is quic
kly paid, estate settlement is readily effected, trust arrangements are immediately operative, and then on the emotional side, a loving family is not subjected to the drawn-out hopes and worries involved in disappearance. Death is cut and dried and final, Mr. Wilson, as I’m sure a man of your experience will agree upon a few moments’ reflection.”

  Wilson felt terribly tired and dispirited. He thought that if he made another attempt to leave the building and it were frustrated, he would despair absolutely and simply lie down to sleep until morning. Should he try? He could not decide.

  “Naturally, you have some questions, sir,” said Mr. Ruby, encouragingly. “I might add,” he said, as Wilson showed no signs of reacting, “that Mr. Joliffe remarked that you were an unusually perceptive client. I’m sure that you will have some penetrating observations to make on the respective merits of the alternatives.”

  “I’m not a client,” said Wilson, defensively.

  “Precisely, sir. You have signed nothing. You are absolutely right to make such a distinction at this point. Excellently put, Mr. Wilson.” The lawyer paused to permit his cheeks to inflate. “You are beginning, quite properly, from the most basic premise—you are not a client!”

  Mr. Ruby’s enthusiastic assent did not allay Wilson’s alarm, but rather increased it. He felt, perhaps illogically, that as a client he might at least have some rights which the firm would be bound to respect, whereas merely as an ordinary visitor, he would have no status whatsoever, and so he resolved to leave this dangerous and complicated question for the time being, and to return to Mr. Ruby’s specialty.

  “Um, you mentioned the cost of death. Would you mind expanding on that?”

  “Glad to,” Mr. Ruby responded. He leafed through his papers to be sure they were in order, in the course of which he provided himself with extra space by pushing the tray which held Wilson’s untouched supper a bit to one side. “Let me start,” the lawyer said, “by describing to you what we call our first-class death. This costs in the neighborhood of thirty thousand dollars.” He absently reached over to the tray and lifted the silver dish that covered the plate. “Well, Mr. Wilson, this seems to be your supper. Won’t you take it, sir? It’s still nice and warm.”